Congress General Secretary Rahul Gandhi will meet the newly elected MLAs to Uttar Pradesh Assembly and Members of Parliament today to discuss the strategy for the upcoming general elections in 2014 after a massive defeat in Assembly Election 2012 held in February. Rahul Gandhi, who was instrumental in securing 22 of the 80 seats in the Lok Sabha polls in the state in 2009, met the party observes and party candidates who had lost despite securing more than 20, 000 votes in the UP elections this year.
The candidates came to the meeting with duly filled questionnaires and were invited by Gandhi over three separate sessions - each attended by 50 candidates - to deliberate on their responses. The participants expect an organisational shake-up aimed at rewarding the deserving leaders and weeding out the non-performers. Another review session on UP will follow on Friday with Rahul hearing out party MPs from UP, newly-eleted MLAs and Union ministers from the state. At the interaction on Thursday, most of the party candidates from UP agreed that a weak organisation was the foremost reason for the party's failure to tap the anti-incumbency sentiment against the Mayawati government. Interestingly, both Congress president Sonia Gandhi and general secretary Rahul Gandhi had listed "weak organisation and structure" of the party in UP as the prime cause for the no-show in state polls.